Ian Fleming facts: From Goldeneye to JFK, the colourful life of the real James Bond | Books | Entertainment | Daily Express By Stefan Kyriazis 06:01, Fri, Aug 22, 2014 Daniel Craig as the latest incarnation of Bond - but do you know what Vesper Lynd was names after?[ FS] His name was Fleming, Ian Fleming. The son of a Conservative MP for Henley, he was educated at Eton and Sandhurst before pursuing careers as as a journalist and naval intelligence officer. He wrote his first James Bond novel, Casino Royale, at the age of 44 and went on to sell over 100 million books worldwide. Eleven more Bond novels and a very famous children’s book cemented his position as one of the best-selling and best-loved authors of the 20th century.

The first Bond film, Dr No was released in 1962 and began one of the greatest franchises in film history - a franchise that would bring us the likes of Sean Connery, Roger Moore and Daniel Craig as the leading man, surrounded by a host of famous beauties such as Ursula Andress, Jane Seymour, Honor Blackman, Halle Berry and Eva Green. SCROLL DOWN FOR 10 FACTS ABOUT IAN FLEMING Life often imitated art and Fleming’s privileged background and increasing fame meant that he mixed with the highest levels of society and seemingly made the most of every moment. Yet he only enjoyed a few years of international success before he died suddenly of a heart attack in the early hours of August 12, 1964. It was his son Caspar’s 12th birthday. Matthew Parker’s new book Goldeneye: Where Bond Was Born: Ian Fleming's Jamaica takes a look at Fleming’s extraordinary life and the creation of his most famous fictional character. To mark the 50th anniversary of his death, Parker has shared his favourite facts about the man behind the iconic spy. Ian Fleming with Sean Connery on the set of the first Bond film, Dr.

No, at Pinewood Studios [ PH] 1. GOLDENEYE IS A HOUSE All the James Bond novels and stories were written at Goldeneye, the house he built on Jamaica’s north coast where he spent two months of every year from the end of the war until his death 50 years ago. In 1976 the estate was purchased by Bob Marley who sold it on to Island Records founder Chris Blackwell the following year. Blackwell has developed the estate and surrounding lands into a luxury resort. Fleming's gardener, Ramsey, although retired, still lives on the property. 2. HE HAD ECLECTIC MUSIC TASTES The Bond books are filled with virile, overtly macho fights, both with fists and guns but, as a child, Fleming wanted no part in his upper class family’s hunting, shooting and fishing exploits. Instead, he preferred to stay in and listen to Hawaiian guitar music. 3.

WOMEN WERE NOT ALWAYS ON HIS MIND Despite his reputation for being obsessed with beautiful women in his books and his own life, his first brush with expulsion from Eton was not because of womanising, but because he bunked off to visit the Empire Exhibition at Wembley in 1925 aged 17. Our office certainly doesn't look like this: Fleming's Jamaican home Goldeneye [ PH] 4. VESPER WAS NOT NAMED AFTER A MOTORBIKE The first ever Bond girl, Vesper Lynd of Casino Royale, was actually named after a cocktail - a mix of frozen rum, fruit and herbs - Ian had been given in Jamaica. Two of his other famous heroines, Solitaire from Live and Let Die, and Domino from Thunderball, are named after rare Jamaican birds. A legend is born - Sean Connery and Ursula Andress in Dr. No [ FS] 5. HE WASN'T KEEN ON AMERICA The very British agent OO7 seemed to constantly and single-handedly save the world.

So it’s not a great surprise to discover that Fleming had little regard for the United States, calling it: “A society that fails to establish a clear moral definition of right and wrong." In case that wasn't clear enough, he also believed that Americans were, “Totally unprepared to rule the world that is now theirs.” Fleming and his wife Ann Charteris [ GETTY] 6. HE BECAME AN UNWITTING PLAYER IN THE SUEZ CRISIS He first became front-page news not because of his books but because the Prime Minister Antony Eden stayed at his house in Jamaica when his health failed during the Suez Crisis of 1956. 7. HIS SHARED HIS WIFE WITH A POLITICIAN Ian Fleming fell in love with his wife Ann Charteris while she was still married to the second Viscount Rothermere. But she didn't remain faithful to her new husband and had a life-long affair with Hugh Gaitskell, the leader of the Labour Party. The Flemings had one son, Caspar, who lived a short and rather tragic life. After losing his father at the age of 12, Caspar took his life when he was 23.

Fleming also wrote the children's book that inspired the perennial classic Chitty Chitty Bang Bang [KOBAL COLLECTION] Related articles Harry Potter stars in Wizard of Oz remake 8. HIS SON INSPIRED CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG Not many people realise that Fleming also wrote the books that inspired the 1968 Dick Van Dyke film. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: The Magical Car about an eccentric inventor's adventures with his thinking, flying Paragon Panther was written for Fleming’s son Caspar and published in three volumes, the first in 1964. It was serialised in the Daily Express every day for a week when it was published. Matthew Parker [ PH] 9. JAMES BOND WAS NAMED AFTER A BIRD-WATCHER Fleming was a keen bird-watcher and appropriated the name for his most famous creation from a leading American ornithologist. He wrote to the real Bond's wife, explaining his choice, "It struck me that this brief, unromantic, Anglo-Saxon and yet very masculine name was just what I needed and so a second James Bond was born." The real James Bond turned up with his wife at Goldeneye in 1964.

Fleming said he was "terribly amused by the whole thing". 10. HE ADVISED JFK ON THE CUBAN CRISIS At a dinner in Washington, Fleming told JFK that the best way to deal with Castro was to suggest that American nuclear tests had made men with beards sexually impotent. It's unclear whether Kennedy took his advice. Goldeneye: Where Bond Was Born: Ian Fleming’s Jamaica by Matthew Parker (Hutchinson, £20) is out now Most read in Books How Ian Fleming’s James Bond Was Born in Jamaica -- Vulture March 12, 2015 11:56 a.m. How Ian Fleming’s James Bond Was Born in Jamaica He didn't like Sean Connery at first. 803 Shares Print Share During location filming in Jamaica, Ian Fleming gives Sean Connery some firsthand pointers on his portrayal of James Bond. Courtesy of Pegasus Books and Bert Cann/United Artists Corporation. 1962 Danjaq, LLC and United Artists Corporation. All rights reserved James Bond, one of the most iconic characters to emerge out of the postwar wreckage of Europe, was born in Jamaica.

Ian Fleming, a former intelligence officer, first visited in 1943 while the island was still under British rule and built a house he called Goldeneye on the northern coast three years after. It was here that he would write all of his James Bond novels, starting with Casino Royale in 1952, up until The Man With the Golden Gun, which was published after his death in 1964. Matthew Parker’s new book Goldeneye Where Bond Was Born: Ian Fleming’s Jamaica explores the complicated relationship Fleming had with the island as it moved from British colony to independent nation. Here are the ten most interesting things Vulture learned, from Fleming’s terrible habits (70 cigarettes a day!) to how he felt about Sean Connery. Goldeneye was named after a wartime operation. Fleming was the assistant to the director of Naval Intelligence, and Goldeneye was the name of a wartime operation he had planned for the defense of Gibraltar. It also had a synergistic quality to it: The town Goldeneye was near Oracabessa, derived from the Spanish “Golden Head.” The name is also a nod to Carson McCullers's novel Reflections in a Golden Eye.

The design of the house was aggressively Spartan, with no cupboards or hot water, and a kitchen that simply had a stove and a sink. It was not meant to be comfortable. Fleming smoked 70 cigarettes a day and drank like a fish. According to a doctor’s report, Fleming admitted to “smoking seventy cigarettes a day and drinking at least a quarter of a bottle of gin.” He would carry on like this despite doctor’s orders otherwise. His deteriorating health would appear in the later James Bond novels, as Bond suffers from “that nagging sense of morning guilt that one is slowly wrecking one’s body” (Thunderball). In his notebook, he wrote something from another writer: “Death is like any untamed animal. He respects a scornful eye.” He died at the age of 56. James Bond’s love for animals comes from Fleming. Fleming was an avid ornithologist and general nature lover. In the books, if someone kills a bird, James Bond will kill you: “the Robber” in Live and Let Die, Von Hammerstein in “For Your Eyes Only,” Scaramanga in The Man With the Golden Gun. Bond himself doesn’t kill an animal unless it’s a fish.

Oh, or a human. Goldeneye was an artistic hotspot. In the 1950s, Jamaica became a hotspot for celebrity tourism, owing in large part to Fleming. Marilyn Monroe, Errol Flynn, Vivien Leigh, Audrey Hepburn, and many others passed through. A journalist for the national paper the Daily Gleaner wrote that this was where people “drank, idled and committed adultery in the sunshine.” Goldeneye in particular saw a number of artists and writers pass through, including Lucien Freud (whom Fleming hated because he suspected he was having an affair with his wife, Ann), Evelyn Waugh, Truman Capote, Graham Greene, and even the prime minister, Anthony Eden. He was closest, for better or worse, with the playwright Noël Coward, who also incorporated the island into his work (as a fictional one called Samolo) and created characters based on Fleming in numerous works like Pomp and Circumstance and Volcano. JFK’s endorsement made James Bond a big deal in the U.S. An article from Life magazine on March 17, 1961 listed John F. Kennedy’s favorite books, which placed Fleming’s From Russia With Love at No. 9.

Fleming and Kennedy would dine together, and Kennedy asked Fleming what Bond would do to get rid of Fidel Castro. Fleming joked that Bond would drop leaflets saying that the fallout from nuclear tests would make any bearded man sexually impotent. The revolution would be quashed once Castro shaved his beard. He loved Jamaica because it didn’t show any signs of rebelling. Fleming was kind to his staff, but deeply paternalistic: He required them to address him as “Commander," for one. His views on race become blatantly unconscionable in Live and Let Die, and his final novel, The Man With a Golden Gun, depicted black people — both American and Jamaican — reduced to stereotypes and with little to no agency. Basically, Jamaica remained a kind of exotic repository of British nostalgia for its former imperialist self in the Bond books. Eldridge Cleaver, one of the early Black Panther leaders, called the books an example of a white “fantasy world.” Yes, James Bond is supposed to save America all the time.

While Fleming was impressed by America’s size, scale, and technological achievements, he believed that the nation had a “total unpreparedness to rule the world that is now theirs.” This bias would appear in his books, where Americans would appear as rude and jealous of Bond’s style and panache. The books were popular in postwar Britain largely because they portrayed a strong Britain at odds with its real-world decline. Dr. No was made on a shoestring budget, but it launched a franchise. Dr. No was the first feature film adapting Fleming’s sixth novel. Financing the film was tricky at first, with the budget set at $1 million. The deal Fleming inked got him an initial $50,000 at signing and $100,000 for each subsequent movie. The film would become a box-office sensation in the U.K., and eventually grossed £60 million worldwide. Overall, the franchise has raked in over $5 billion at the box office. Bond didn’t want Sean Connery for the role at first. Fleming wanted David Niven, whereas the producers were testing out Cary Grant, who ultimately proved to be too expensive.

Their last resort was to go to an unknown: Sean Connery, whom they chose because he looked like the Express cartoon version of Bond. It wasn't until after dinner with Connery at the Savoy, where a female guest called him "very attractive," that he came around. Basically, even Fleming couldn’t deny Connery’s hotness. After meeting him, Fleming later said that while Connery was “not quite the idea” he had of Bond, but “he would be if [he] wrote the books over again.” Bob Marley was rejected for a bit part in Dr. No. For a scene requiring musicians, they interviewed Bob Marley but decided against him because he was “very untidy and crude.” Instead, the job went to Byron Lee and the Dragonaires, a legendary ensemble that played on the northern coast and in Kingston since the 1950s.

Tags: Ian Fleming - Biography - IMDb Ian Fleming Biography Showing all 46 items Jump to: Overview (4) | Mini Bio (2) | Spouse (1) | Trade Mark (2) | Trivia (27) | Personal Quotes (9) | Salary (1) Overview (4) 6' (1.83 m) Mini Bio (2) Born into a wealthy and influential English family, Ian Fleming spent his early years attending top British schools such as Eton and Sandhurst military academy. He took to writing while schooling in Kitzbuhel, Austria, and upon failing the entrance requirements for Foreign Service joined the news agency Reuters as a journalist -- winning the respect of his peers for his coverage of a "show trial" in Russia of several Royal Engineers on espionage charges. Fleming briefly worked in the financial sector for the family bank, but just prior to the Second World War, was recruited into British Naval Intelligence where he excelled, shortly achieving the rank of Commander.

When the war ended, Fleming retired to Jamaica where he built a house called "Goldeneye," took up writing full-time and created the character that would make him famous -- British Secret Service agent James Bond, in a novel called "Casino Royale." Fleming spent the rest of his life writing and traveling the world, but as his Bond character reached new heights of popularity on movie screens, Fleming was in ailing health. He died of a heart attack (his second) in England in August 1964 at the age of 56. - IMDb Mini Biography By: Pedro Borges Spouse (1) ( 24 March 1952 - 12 August 1964) (his death) (1 child) Trade Mark (2) Cigarette (in holder) perched between fingers of his right hand The female characters of his stories have double-entendre names Trivia (27) Half-brother of cellist Amaryllis Fleming . Featured in the novel "James Bond: The Unauthorized Biography of 007" by John Pearson .

This novel, which is considered part of the Bond canon by some, suggests that Bond was real and that Fleming wrote stories based on Bond's real-life adventures as a strange way of hiding classified information "in plain sight." Cousin of Christopher Lee . He died on his son's birthday (12th of August 1964). Casper died of a drug overdose in Jamaica in 1974. Anne survived them both, and died in 1981. Her son by her first marriage, Raymond Arthur O'Neill, is now the 4th Baron O'Neill. His wife, Anne Geraldine Charteris, was the granddaughter of the 9th Earl of Wemyss, and had been previously married to Shane O'Neill, 3rd Lord O'Neill (she was his widow) and then to Esmond Cecil Harmsworth, 2nd Viscount Rothermere, whom she divorced to marry Ian. Anne and Ian had one son, Casper Robert Fleming, born 12th of August 1952. The largest collection of his novels is located at the Lilly Library on the Indiana University campus, Bloomington, IN.

His James Bond novels and story elements were originally used in the films, beginning with Dr. No (1962). Until Casino Royale (2006), the last James Bond movie to use elements from Fleming's stories was Licence to Kill (1989). His home in Jamaica was named "Goldeneye" and was the source of the name of the 1995 James Bond movie GoldenEye (1995). His elder brother Peter Fleming (a travel writer of some note in the 1930s) was married until his death to Celia Johnson ( Brief Encounter (1945)). His nieces Kate Fleming (now Grimond) and Lucy Fleming (also an actress) are now his literary heirs. Supposedly modeled the character of James Bond after Merlin Minshall, a man who worked for Mr. Fleming during WWII as a spy. Raymond Chandler was a fan of the James Bond novels and urged Fleming to continue writing them in the mid-1950s. His nephew, Nichol Fleming, wrote an adventure story in the Bond style titled "Counter Paradise" in 1968. Distantly related by marriage to Leslie Charteris .

He initially objected to the casting of Sean Connery as James Bond in Dr. No (1962) because he felt that Connery was too "unrefined". He later changed his mind after seeing Connery's performance in the finished film. Is portrayed by Jason Connery in The Secret Life of Ian Fleming (1990). Jason is the son of Sean Connery , who became famous for playing James Bond in the 1960s. Fleming's health had never been strong, and it was not helped by his lifestyle. At 38, complaining of chest pains, he had informed a startled doctor that he consumed 70 cigarettes and a bottle of gin a day. In 1961 he had a massive heart attack, which was followed by a series of increasingly debilitating illnesses, including a severe chest infection and pleurisy. Finally, on 11 August 1964--the night before his son's 12th birthday--he collapsed. He died the next morning on his son's birthday. Film stars who were an influence on his vision of James Bond included David Niven , Rex Harrison , Cary Grant and Hoagy Carmichael .

He was a bird-watcher and supposedly named "James Bond" after an ornithologist of the same name (See James Bond ) whose book, "The Birds of the West Indies", he had read. He borrowed the name because it was the "dullest" name he could think of. The book title "Goldeneye" is also a birding reference, as goldeneyes are a type of duck. As a member of British Intelligence during WWII, he worked with the American OSS (Office of Strategic Services), the predecessor to the CIA. He contributed his experience and expertise to the OSS and later helped the Americans set up the CIA. His scrapbook was sold at a charity auction in December 1992 by his step-daughter, Fionn O'Neill. It was auctioned at Sotheby's in New Bond Street, which was used as a location in Octopussy (1983). Reportedly it was acquired for £30,000 by Fleming's nieces Lucy, Kate and Nichol. Proceeds went to the London Library. Geoffrey Jenkins collaborated with him on a James Bond story between 1957-64.

Glidrose Publishers contracted Jenkins to develop the story into a full novel after Fleming died in 1964. The book was entitled "Per Fine Ounce" but has never been available to readers and published. Supposedly based the character of James Bond on real-life spy Sidney Reilly. Was a huge fan of Studebakers. One of his last cars was a Studebaker Avanti. The reason he excelled at his studies was to please his mother, a beautiful but cold woman who never showed him any affection. In 1995 the gold-plated Royal typewriter on which he hammered out many of his 007 novels was auctioned by Christie's of London for £50,000 to a buyer who still remains anonymous. This is the most expensive typewriter to date. According to the National Geographic, CNN and the BBC, he patterned James Bond after Dusko Popov , a Serbian double agent nicknamed Tricycle. Popov was a worthy predecessor to the fictional spy James Bond. He was noted as a womanizer and was dating many famous actresses (some of them were Hollywood stars).

He also stayed at the best hotels, ate at top restaurants, visited smart casinos and was a bon vivant. While Fleming worked in British naval intelligence during WWII, he was detailed to trail this charismatic spy, who eventually became a double agent for the British (among other intelligence work, he provided information to the FBI that the Japanese were planning to attack Pearl Harbor). Upon his death, his remains were interred at St. Andrew's Churchyard in Sevenhampton, Gloucestershire, England. Personal Quotes (9) I always make it a rule never to look back. Otherwise, I'd ask myself how I could write such piffle and live with myself, day after day. [mid-1950s] My James Bond novels are really for a very specialized, limited market. I am not counting the great unwashed public and do not expect them to fancy anything I write. I wanted the simplest, dullest, plainest-sounding name I could find, James Bond was much better than something more interesting like "Peregrine Maltravers". Exotic things would happen to and around him but he would be a neutral figure--an anonymous blunt instrument wielded by a government department.

[interview in The Daily Express, 1962] The target of my books lay somewhere between the solar plexus and the upper thigh. Men want a woman whom they can turn on and off like a light switch. [on how he wrote "Casino Royale"] Writing about 2,000 words in three hours every morning, "Casino Royale" dutifully produced itself. I wrote nothing and made no corrections until the book was finished. If I had looked back at what I had written the day before, I might have despaired. [on James Bond] Apart from the fact that he wears the same clothes that I wear, he and I really have little in common. I do rather envy him his blondes and his efficiency, but I can't say I much like the chap. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. [his last words, reportedly to the ambulance attendants] Awfully sorry to trouble you chaps.

Salary (1) Ian Fleming’s Jamaica: Where James Bond and His Creator Lived and Adventured - The New York Times The New York Times Travel |Ian Fleming’s Jamaica Search Travel | Winter in the Sun Ian Fleming’s Jamaica Photo Strawberry Hill is an 18th-century plantation turned resort. Credit Alex Quesada for The New York Times “THE first law for a secret agent is to get his geography right,” Ian Fleming wrote in “The Man With the Golden Gun.” And so it is for anyone following the trail of the man who created the world’s most famous secret agent through his adopted island of Jamaica , a journey that starts near Kingston on the tiny spit of beach called the Palisadoes that connects the city to Norman Manley International Airport. Most of the traffic heads into the capital, but if you steer westward, snaking around the contours of dunes on the poorly paved street toward the peninsula’s dead end, you’ll find Morgan’s Harbour Hotel in Port Royal. Only five miles from the airport, you are already deep into Ian Fleming’s Jamaica. Fleming, the British intelligence officer turned newspaper man turned spy novelist born 100 years ago this year, spent winters on his Caribbean getaway for almost two decades.

The airport and the Palisadoes both feature in James Bond novels; the hotel is where Bond chose to lay his head in “Golden Gun.” It was on Jamaica that Fleming wrote more than a dozen novels and short stories featuring Agent 007. Of these once best-selling volumes of action pulp, “Dr. No,” “Live and Let Die,” “The Man With the Golden Gun” and the short story “Octopussy” are largely or partly set in Jamaica, and the films based on the first two were also shot there. The island was Fleming’s retreat, artist colony and passion, and he repeatedly sent Bond, an incarnation of Walter Mitty-esque wish fulfillment, on assignment there. The legendary spy experienced the island as Fleming did — beautiful and underdeveloped with enough exoticism, history and potential for danger to justify it as a backdrop for postwar espionage adventure.

Continue reading the main story Fleming’s Jamaica is a Venn diagram of three overlapping spheres: the author’s actual Jamaica of the 1950s and early ’60s (when the island was a British colony rapidly becoming a hot spot for the rich and famous); the semi-fictional Jamaica as seen through James Bond; and Jamaica as a location for the 007 film franchise. Advertisement Continue reading the main story While the rural interior of the country has changed little in the last 50 years, the huge, buffet-to-beach inclusive resorts and a blighted downtown Kingston, once high on the jet-setters’ dance cards, would now discourage Fleming. He lived in Jamaica when you could get there by banana boat, and he described Negril on the west coast as a “five-mile crescent of unbroken, soft, white gold sand, fringed for all its dazzling length with leaning palm trees.” In 1947 Fleming wrote a portrait of his adopted home in Horizon magazine, influential enough to fuel a postwar tourist boomlet among well-heeled Britons and Americans. “I have examined a large part of the world,” he wrote.

“After looking at all these, I spent four days in Jamaica in July 1943. July is the beginning of the hot season and it rained in rods everyday at noon, yet I swore that if I survived the contest I would go back to Jamaica, buy a piece of land, build a house and live in it as much as my job would allow.” He did just that, as foreign manager for Kemsley Newspapers. The Palisadoes at night is still as Fleming described it in “Dr. No,” a “long cactus-fringed road” with “the steady zing of the crickets, the rush of warm, scented air ... the necklace of yellow lights shimmering across the harbour.” Not so Morgan’s Harbour Hotel, now an estranged and shabbily furnished cousin of the “romantic little hotel” from “Golden Gun.” Kingston, reached by the road used in the first car chase in “Dr. No,” sits beside bright blue waters and beaches littered with broken boats and the rusting remains of bygone industry. It feels like an early Bond film — vibrant, colorful and a bit disconcerting. What Kingston does not resemble, for the most part, is itself from the Fleming days.

Justine Henzell, a Kingston native whose father, Perry, was a writer of the reggae-fueled movie “The Harder They Come,” was my guide to the city. As we wandered downtown, Ms. Henzell pointed out the urban shadows of former elegance, including an empty lot by the water where the Myrtle Bank Hotel, once one of the Caribbean’s most glamorous, had stood. The vacant space now borders a parking lot where hundreds of young people reveled to loud dancehall beats in the middle of a Sunday afternoon. When Fleming made his first visit to the island 65 years to the month when I was there, he chose to stay in the cooler climes of the Blue Mountains. I followed his lead that evening and took the B1 road, which curls itself up into the mountains. My destination was Strawberry Hill , an 18th-century coffee plantation turned resort owned by Chris Blackwell, the founder of Island Records. A Jamaican native, Mr. Blackwell is part of Fleming lore himself, thanks to his mother, Blanche Blackwell, who was, depending on your source, either the writer’s close friend or his mistress and muse. That connection helped Mr.

Blackwell, at age 24, land a gig as a location manager for “Dr. No” (you can spot him dancing in a bar scene filmed at Morgan’s Harbour), and his resort franchise includes the Fleming home on the North Coast. Over a breakfast of scrambled eggs and Blue Mountain coffee (the same morning fare Fleming preferred and Bond nearly always enjoyed) on the balcony of a private bungalow, guests overlook the same vista Bond did in “Live and Let Die,” where he “had his breakfast on the veranda and gazed down on the sunlit panorama of Kingston and Port Royal.” Most of Fleming’s days in Jamaica, though, were spent on the northern coast, best reached by the A3, or Junction Road, “that runs across the thin waist of Jamaica.” Bond and his local sidekick Quarrel travel the same route in “Live and Let Die” to get to the secret island lair of the villainous genius Mr. Big.

The mountainous interior of the island, “like the central ridges of a crocodile’s armour” as Fleming put it in “Live and Let Die,” is a constant pull on the steering wheel, back and forth, through little villages, past cliffside sundries shops and on numerous detours into rutted, gravel-spattered dirt roads. It’s a relief to reach the other side and spill into the ramshackle town of Port Maria, its pristine aquiline bay punctuated by the diminutive and uninhabited Cabarita Island, which inspired Surprise Island, the fictional hideout of Mr. Big. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Fleming and his wife, Ann, were married in Port Maria’s town hall, which still stands. She didn’t share her husband’s love of Jamaica, never staying as long as he did. But his best man and local neighbor, Noël Coward, was equally smitten with the place. Coward was a year-round island resident and a tax exile who died there in 1973. The home he built, Blue Harbour , is a compound of seaside bungalows overlooking Port Maria’s bay. Guests can now stay there if they can find it.

The only marker is a small, faded sign pointing down a heavily potholed road leading to a rusty white gate. Judging by the décor and electrical wiring, Blue Harbour has pretty much been left untouched. But despite its rough edges, provincial food and generally musty condition, it has three things going for it: a stunning perch over the sea, a cliffside saltwater pool and a rich history. You can imagine a rotating cast of celebrities like Errol Flynn (who also lived on the North Coast), Katharine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, James Mason and Laurence Olivier, all lounging poolside. The living room is hung with pictures of celebrities like Sean Connery, Alec Guinness clowning in the pool in Arabian headdress and a group shot that included the Flemings. The scene became too much for Coward, who relocated to a higher perch above Blue Harbour. His retreat from his retreat, Firefly, is now a museum and his grave site. His friends gave their homes colorful names as well. Fleming’s haven, about 10 miles west, was Goldeneye , named for a wartime operation he was involved in, and now one of the most exclusive resorts on the island.

Between the two writers lived Blanche Blackwell, at Bolt. Of his mother’s relationship with Fleming, Chris Blackwell simply told me that she was a good friend of his and was very fond of him. As a thank you gift for a stay at Goldeneye, Ms. Blackwell gave Fleming a small boat she had christened Octopussy. She may have also been an inspiration for Honeychile Rider, the Bond girl from “Dr. No,” who, like Ms. Blackwell, was the Jamaica-born child of an old island family and a passionate student of sea life. Situated in the small town of Oracabessa, once a banana port, Goldeneye is an unassuming patch of land with stone paths and trees planted by former famous guests. Handwritten signs mark the mango planted by Pierce Brosnan, the lime tree by Harrison Ford, the royal palms by the Clintons. Set among them are three villas that, with Fleming’s original house and a restaurant overlooking the ocean, make up the current property. Where the restaurant sits, a gazebo once stood.

Fleming liked to take notes in it, and it once served as a command station when Prime Minister Anthony Eden of Britain visited Goldeneye in 1956 (another boon for Jamaican public relations). The Honeychile villa, just over a small fence from Fleming’s house, is nicely appointed with a plush bed draped in mosquito netting, a claw foot tub and an outdoor shower built into a large banyan tree. The bedroom is flanked by a second house with a patio overlooking the sea and a bookshelf housing a nearly complete set of the Bond stories (written a hundred feet away). It is hard to imagine the resort retaining that kind of casual intimacy when Goldeneye’s 100-acre residential development currently under construction is finished in the coming years. Establishing his life in Jamaica was a necessary precursor to Fleming’s pursuit of fiction. “One of the first essentials is to create a vacuum in my life which can only be satisfactorily filled by some form of creative work,” he wrote in the Evening Standard of London. His training as a Reuters correspondent was another ingredient in this equation, allowing him to write with a don’t-look-back, free-flow technique.

Six weeks later you have a novel, he wrote, and “if you sell the serial rights and film rights, you do very well.” Indeed. Before mass-market guides like Frommer’s and Lonely Planet, travelogues were tourists’ main resources outside Europe. For the 1950s Caribbean, Patrick Leigh Fermor’s “The Traveler’s Tree” was the bible. Mr. Fermor visited Goldeneye and glowingly wrote that “it might serve as a model for new houses in the tropics ... great windows capture every breeze, to cool, even on the hottest day, the large white rooms.” His description is apt. The small house’s windows are still without glass. Past the sunken garden is the private beach to which Fleming often trod — fins, mask and spear in hand. The small rock pool Fleming built for his son, Casper, is still standing. Black crabs crawl along its walls, recalling the swarm of them that Dr. No uses to try to torture Honeychile to death. This perch out to the reef that shielded the snorkeling writer from sharks and barracuda directly inspired Fleming’s work.

Advertisement Continue reading the main story Of the entire 007 cannon, the short story “Octopussy,” written in 1962, best captures his island lifestyle. The story is about Major Dexter Smythe, a Briton “irretrievably tied to Jamaica,” attracted to the “paradise of sunshine, good food, cheap drink, a glorious haven from the gloom ... of postwar England” but later bored from consorting with the “international riffraff” of the north shore. His one joy is exploring the local sea life, including the eponymous octopus to which he feeds conch. Fleming’s gardener, Ramsey Dacosta, who still works at Goldeneye (now in guest relations) and invariably referred to Fleming as the Commander, told me that his old employer would bring conch to an octopus at the reef, and, as in the short story, “the octopus would return the shell.” Bond makes a brief appearance in “Octopussy” to arrest Smythe for a wartime theft, but Smythe takes his own life, with help from the octopus.

Fleming died a much less dramatic death from a heart attack in 1964 in England, where he is buried. Goldeneye is the mecca of any Fleming pilgrimage, but not the heart of it. In Horizon, he wrote about the other elements that made his life in Jamaica fulfilling, from the food (“delicious and limitless”) to the weather, calypso and, most importantly, the people. Fleming wrote that the locals “will surprise and charm you,” which they often did during my time there. But even in Fleming’s lifetime, Jamaica was evolving. By the time he wrote his final Bond novel, “Golden Gun,” in 1964, the island had gained independence from Britain, and Fleming’s nostalgia for the colonial era is channeled into his spy. Waiting in the Kingston airport for a flight to Havana, the secret agent recalls his “many assignments in Jamaica and many adventures on the island ... the oldest and most romantic of former British possessions.” As he reflected on his escapades in “Dr.

No” and his love affair with Honeychile Rider, “James Bond smiled to himself,” Fleming wrote, “as the dusty pictures clicked across his brain.” GETTING THERE Air Jamaica flies from Kennedy Airport in New York to Kingston and Montego Bay. According to a recent online search, flights for travel next month start at about $500. WHERE TO EAT Ashanti Oasis (Hope Gardens, Kingston; 876-970-2079) is an open-air vegetarian restaurant in the middle of the peaceful botanical gardens. The menu varies daily, but you can’t go wrong with a combination platter of the day’s tropically inspired dishes and a fresh juice. Lunch for two is around $1,300 Jamaican dollars, about $17 at 75.8 Jamaican dollars to the U.S. dollar. The Seaside Terrace at Round Hill Hotel and Villas (John Pringle Drive, Montego Bay; 876-956-7050; ) feels as if you’ve gone back 50 years when Jamaica catered to the rich and famous.

The enormous bar is lined with black-and-white photos of celebrities from that era, and you can enjoy hearty à la carte fare like escovich snapper sandwiches on coco bread ($18; American currency is widely accepted for payment) under umbrellas by the water. ON THE TRAIL OF THE MAN BEHIND 007 WHERE TO STAY Other than its proximity to the Kingston airport, the only reason to stay at the underfurnished Morgan’s Harbour Hotel & Marina (Palisadoes Road, Port Royal; 876-967-8040; ; about $140 for a standard double room) is its association with James Bond lore. The famous secret agent stayed there in the novel “The Man With the Golden Gun” and the first 007 film, “Dr. No,” used the hotel’s grounds as a shooting location. Advertisement Continue reading the main story A former coffee plantation turned luxury resort, Strawberry Hill (New Castle Road, Irish Town; 876-944-8400; ; starting at $395) is high in the Blue Mountains outside Kingston. Some individual bungalows include private kitchens and four-poster beds.

Goldeneye (Oracabessa; 876-975-3354; the one-bedroom villa starts at $660), Ian Fleming ’s former home, has been transformed into one of the most exclusive resorts in Jamaica, complete with private beach and a restaurant. Staying the night in the three-bedroom villa where Fleming wrote the James Bond novels can cost up to $3,400, but the three villas are a plush and intimate consolation. Judging by the condition of the rooms, Blue Harbour (Port Maria; 575-586-1244; ; $200) has changed little since Noël Coward made his home there. The stunning views of the ocean and the cliffside saltwater pool help guests overlook the mustiness. DAVID G. ALLAN is Travel & Styles editor for NYTimes.com. A version of this article appears in print on , on Page TR8 of the New York edition with the headline: Ian Fleming’s Jamaica.

Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe Ian Fleming – the real James Bond - Telegraph James Bond Ian Fleming – the real James Bond 50 years after his death, we take a look back at Ian Fleming – the man who created secret agent 007 Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond, died August 12 1964 Photo: Rex Features By Jacob Stolworthy 12:57PM BST 12 Aug 2014 1. Ian Fleming’s tumultuous upbringing began when he attended Eton College. Concerned that his poor academic results would bring shame upon the family, his mother Evelyn withdrew him soon afterwards despite his excelling in athletics. He was moved on to Sandhurst where he began training as an Army officer. Soon after starting at Sandhurst, Fleming contracted gonorrhoea from a prostitute. 2. Distressed by his antics, his mother packed him off to Austrian education establishment The Tennerhof, situated in Kitzbühel – which had a reputation as a school for the problematic and the rich.

It was here that an overriding imprint would be left on Fleming’s life: the institute was run by Ernan Forbes Dennis – a former member of MI6 – and his novelist wife Phyllis Bottome, who both helped shape a future interest in espionage and literature. 3. Early 1930s love letters , written by Fleming to Austrian lover Edith von Morpurgo, were recently discovered and auctioned, many of which contained eye-raising sado-masochistic notions. The letters, torn and partly in German, confirm Fleming’s debauched tastes ("I would have to whip you,"..."I would also like to hurt you because you have earned it and in order to tame you like a little wild animal," for example). Morpurgo and her family were later killed at Auschwitz. Ian Fleming during his years in Austria Related Articles Gordon Burn Prize 2014: Super Furry Animals frontman nominated 12 Aug 2014 4. Fleming's elder brother Peter was a celebrated adventurer and travel writer whose first published work was Brazilian Adventure in 1933 (notable for its droll comparison of São Paulo and Reading).

After attending Eton, Peter Fleming went on to marry actress Celia Johnson, best known for her Oscar-nominated role of Laura Jesson in Brief Encounter (1945). After Ian's death, Peter served on the board of Glidrose Ltd, a company purchased by Fleming to hold all literary rights to his professional works. Perhaps influenced by his brother, Ian Fleming had previously attempted travel writing with non-fiction book Thrilling Cities – a compilation of writing about cities throughout Asia, Europe and North America. Fleming, who often posed with a cigarette, at his writing desk in the Jamaican residence, Goldeneye 5. Many of Fleming’s earlier experiences had a striking effect on his writing later on in life. Shortly after leaving Austria, he became a Naval Intelligence Officer, ending up as personal assistant to the director of Naval Intelligence, John Godfrey (a superior said to be the model for M – played in the film series by Bernard Lee and later Judi Dench). Fleming’s rank was Commander, one he shared with Bond.

Many claim that Fleming’s behaviour – including his sexual antics with married women (even after marriage to former Lady Rothermere, Ann Charteris), his chain-smoking habits (80-plus cigarettes a day), incessant drinking (when told to stop drinking gin by his Doctor, he simply switched to bourbon) and his view of women in general – is echoed in the pages of his James Bond novels. 6. Fleming began writing the first Bond novel 'Casino Royale' a mere day after marrying Ann, with whom he had long been having an affair at his home in Jamaica – a residence which he named Goldeneye (referring to the code-word for a Naval Intelligence operation he had masterminded years previous). Despite heavily involving himself in in the marketing of the novel, sales failed to take off until newly-elected US President Kennedy mentioned Fleming as one of his favourite bedtime reads. Fleming with his wife, Ann 7. Fleming’s Goldeneye residence was an odd concoction, made of concrete with a curious lack of windowpanes and baths. His frequent trips to Jamaica led to his becoming the first English-language writer to have an international airport named after him – the Ian Fleming International Airport, opened in 2011. 8.

In The Spy Who Loved Me novel (1962), Fleming adopted a different literary style, with a story that is written almost entirely from the point of view of a female character, Vivienne Michel (who also receives a co-author credit). In fact, Bond doesn’t appear until over halfway through. Considered to be the most sexually explicit of the series (Fleming claimed it was his easiest to write), the author saw The Spy Who Loved Me as a cautionary tale about Bond, a result of his shock at the series being read in schools. Such was the critical mauling that Fleming demanded that no reprints or paperback edition should be published – a request honoured until two years after his death in 1964 – and even wrote an open apology to publishing firm Jonathan Cape. Fleming enjoying his time in Jamaica, near his Goldeneye residence 9.

When Albert R Broccoli and Harry Saltzman began production of Dr No in 1962, Fleming had two requests: that playwright and fellow Goldeneye resident Noel Coward should play the eponymous villain – a role which Joseph Wiseman made his own – and that long-time friend David Niven should play the coveted role of 007 (he was rejected in favour of Sean Connery). Niven would get his chance to fill the secret agent’s shoes, however, in 1967’s spy satire Casino Royale (a film considered separate to the long-running series). 10. Fleming died in 1964 of a heart attack - on his son Caspar's 12th birthday - aged 56. He only saw two of his Bond novels transposed to the big screen (Dr No and From Russia With Love), while two of his stories were published posthumously (The Man with the Golden Gun and short stories Octopussy and The Living Daylights). In October 1975, his surviving son Caspar comitted suicide, aged 23, while Fleming's widow Ann died in 1981 - she was 68.

Goldeneye Ian Fleming Home Tour Ocho Rios Jamaica ShareThis Goldeneye (Ian Fleming Home) - Ocho Rios, Jamaica Goldeneye is a small and very stylish villa resort hidden away in leisurely, lawned and forested grounds in Oracabessa to east of Ocho Rios on the north coast of Jamaica. The centrepiece is Ian Fleming's old house, which has three bedrooms and a living room, a games/screening room, a small private beach and a private pool. Built in the Fifties it has been modernised with an Oriental touch, including bamboo furniture and mats and carvings (though you can still see the desk at which Fleming wrote many of the James Bond novels). Besides Ian Fleming's villa there are three villas with a varied number of bedrooms, built in earthy tropical style. There is also a cliffside dining room and bar with access to the sea and Low Cay beach next door. As an Island Outpost, Goldeneye is stylish and hip, and has a delightful, tranquil air. It sees many stars  musicians, models and film moguls  witnessed by the trees they have planted in the gardens. Don't get left behind! See the world in a different light.

Exploring the reefs, bird watching, kayaking, refreshing yourself under a waterfall, or discovering through locals about history, culture and tradition provides you with a rich and rewarding experience which is forever imbedded in your memories. The gardens themselves are large. Interestingly they are a former donkey race track, but they are now planted with trees, which include cannonball trees, banyans, African tulip trees and mangos among many others. In fact there is a tradition of planting trees here. It was started as early as 1956, by the former British Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden and his wife (he was here to recuperate after the Suez crisis). They planted a santa maria tree. Since then Grace Jones and Kate Moss have planted star apples, Johnny Depp a guava and Willie Nelson a cinnamon tree. Oh, and of course, as the original home of James Bond, it is fitting that Bond actors should plant one too. In 1998 Pierce Brosnan planted a julie mango. It is also fun to muse on the name Goldeneye.

The name of the town next door, Oracabessa, translates as Golden Head, but Goldeneye  later the name for a Bond film, though not actually of any of Fleming's Bond books  was also the name of an operation in the Second World War which was developed by Fleming. The small villa resort is one of the Island Outposts and it is owned by the man behind the company, Chris Blackwell, who also created Island Records. His family knew Ian Fleming and so he used to visit as a young man. One of his early jobs was to work as a location scout for the James Bond films that came to the island. He was responsible for the beach (just west of Ocho Rios), where Ursula Andress emerged from the waves at the start of Dr No, the first James Bond film. Goldeneye is a small and extremely original hotel. It has the distinctive Island Outpost feel, the best of traditional Jamaican style given an offbeat twist through the funky colour scheme and the advantage of an interesting location, Ian Fleming's House. It sees many people from the media and music business, so there is often an interesting crowd. Goldeneye is extremely low key, but also extremely fashionable.

Beach & Swimming There are a couple of small beaches cut into the cliffs just beneath the villas at Goldeneye. Platforms have also been built out on the rockface, where you will find loungers and some thatched gazebos for shade. The water is usually calm (the coast is protected by an offshore reef) and so the swimming is good. Ian Flemings Goldeneye House Jamaica Jamaica airport Boscobel Aerodrome to be renamed in honour of Ian Fleming ï¿½ from James bond 007 Museum Sweden Nybro Jamaica is set to open its third international airport on January 12. Formerly known as the Boscobel Airstrip, the new Ian Fleming International Airport (OCJ) has been overhauled and expanded to accommodate private international aircraft, as well as small domestic planes. The airport is located just 10 minutes from the famed GoldenEye Hotel & Resort in Oracabessa, and tourism officials hope that the airport with offer jet-setters quick and easy access to resorts on the North Coast. It will become the islandï¿½s main port of entry for private jets entering Jamaica and may in the future support domestic shuttle service to other parts of the island.

The airport is named for author Ian Fleming, who penned all 14 James Bond novels in his home at GoldenEye and played host to the international glitterati of the 50s and 60s. The airportï¿½s opening will be officiated by the islandï¿½s Prime Minister Bruce Golding and will be attended by current GoldenEye owner and founder of Island Records, Chris Blackwell. Prime Minister Bruce Golding (third right) cuts the ribbon to declare open the Ian Fleming airport, previously called the Boscobel Aerodrome, in St Mary on Wednesday. Sharing the moment are, from left, Mark Hart, chairman Airports Authority of Jamaica, Minister of Transport and Works Mike Henry, niece of Ian Fleming, Lucy Fleming, Tourism Minister Ed Bartlett and minister with responsibility for Information, Telecommunications and Special Goldeneye is now a beautiful resort GoldenEye Hotel & Resort on Jamaica's north coast in the village of Oracabessa The 52-acre property is the former home of author Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond. Chris Blackwell, the founder of Island Records and the Island Outpost collection of five Jamaican properties, purchased GoldenEye in 1976.

The newly renovated resort now encompasses 22 units, including nine beach cottages, two lagoon cottages and six lagoon suites as well as Fleming's original villa and four villas built by Blackwell. Fleming first came to Jamaica during World War II, sent by British Naval Intelligence to investigate U-boat activities in the Caribbean. He bought the property on Oracabessa Bay and built his dream house, where he penned all 14 of his Bond novels. His neighbor was English playwright Noel Coward, who built his clifftop retreat called Firefly next door. Over the years the two hideaways became a center for writers, musicians, Hollywood royalty and heads of state. Blackwell preserved much of GoldenEye during the renovation. Fleming's original writing desk still stands in his former villa, for example. Still, significant changes have been made at GoldenEye, according to Jason Henzell, president of Island Outpost. "We've added two new restaurants, sports and fitness activities," Henzell said. "GoldenEye is no longer an all-inclusive resort. We want our guests to go off-property and sample the restaurants, fishing markets and rum shops in the town.

We heavily support community tourism." Inside the Ian Fleming Villa Ian Fleming Villa Ian Fleming's beloved Jamaican home where he wrote 14 of his famous 007 novels. What Fleming loved most about Goldeneye was the out of doors, nature, the sounds and colors, the peace and drama of living by the sea. He delighted in "the blazing sunshine, natural beauty and the most healthy life I could live." Ian Fleming's original house features a stunning view of the sea, three bedrooms with optional air-conditioning, garden baths and showers, swimming pool, sunken garden, separate media play room with theatre screen, exotic Balinese furniture, private beach and kitchen. A hotel has now been built on the island, have a look on Goldeneye.com for more information. The Ian Fleming Villa ï¿½ Three Bedrooms, Two Guest Cottages The original Ian Fleming Villa at GoldenEye overlooks the Caribbean Sea in the quiet village of Oracabessa Bay on Jamaicaï¿½s north coast. The beauty of the Fleming villa is matched only by its history: It is where author Ian Fleming created the James Bond character and wrote all 14 of the superspy novels.

The musician, Sting, wrote his hit song, ï¿½Every Breath You Takeï¿½ while staying at the Fleming Villa and the gold album hanging in the media room today speaks to its special, creative ambiance. Having recently undergone a thoughtful renovation, the villa today features the original three bedrooms, all planned around a courtyard. Additionally, there are now two stand-alone guest cottages that make up this very private estate that sleeps up to ten people Other unique villa features include the very private Fleming Beach, a private pool, state-of-the art media room, and fully renovated kitchen. The villa has its own dedicated staff that includes butler and housekeeper and cook. One of the distinctive qualities of this villa is its privacy and proximity to the GoldenEye resort. Guests have the option of dining at GoldenEyeï¿½s two new restaurants (The Gazebo and Bizot Bar), visiting its FieldSpa for treatments and taking part in all experiential activities. Likewise, guests can also choose to remain in the secluded privacy of the Fleming Villa grounds. goldeneye-map.pdf Walk over to GoldenEye for a spa treatment, for sunset cocktails at the Bizot Bar, for dinner at the Gazebo.

Walk back to Fleming Villa and, again, you?re secluded. Walk over to GoldenEye for a spa treatment, for sunset cocktails at the Bizot Bar, for dinner at the Gazebo. Walk back to Fleming Villa and, again, you?re secluded. Cocktail at Goldeneye Sunset over Ian Flemings Goldeneye villa Sunset over Ian Flemings Goldeneye villa high resolution Dr No Ursula Andress and Sean Connery room at The Goldeneye resort All signs point to the beach, at GoldenEye.. to resaurang Gazebo and to Lagoon suites, Beach Cottages Ian Fleming Goldeneye fishpond pool nr 3 in Flemings villa Fleming Room, where the walls are lined with Ian Flemingï¿½s historic photos Fleming rummet, dï¿½r vï¿½ggarna ï¿½r klï¿½dda med Ian Flemings historiska bilder. Ian Flemings bathroom Goldeneye villa Ian Flemings bathtub Goldeneye villa Master bed room Goldeneye villa. Main Villa ~ 007 Bedroom (master suite): Large bamboo four poster, king-size bed. Fleming?s original writing desk, at which he wrote James Bond's adventures.

Foldout window shutters that open to the sea, Large tropical garden patio with signature GoldenEye claw foot tub, outdoor shower and outdoor sink. Indoor shower & bathroom. Large walk-in closet. Bath and beauty products made using local wild-crafted botanical ingredients. Two Royal Hut hand-dyed batik robes. Hairdryer, Iron/ironing board & Safe box Ian Flemings bathtub Goldeneye villa Mr Ramsey Ian Flemings gardener: with tree planted by Pierce Brosnan januari 6 1998. Grace Jones Goldeneye garden 24 mars 1995 planted by star apple tree. Ian Flemings son Casper Fleming pool in Goldeneye beach with James Bond Gunnar Schï¿½fer Ian Flemings son Casper Fleming pool in Goldeneye beach Goldeneye resort front desk check-in Sarah and Gunnar Bond at Ian Flemings entrï¿½ house First published in 1936, the second edition (1947) was titled Field Guide To Birds Of The West Indies: A Guide To All The Species Of Birds Known From The Greater Antilles, Lesser Antilles and Bahama Islands.

The book is still in print by the Peterson field guide company under the title, Birds of the West Indies. Birds of the West Indies by author James Bond an American ornithologist. Birds of the West Indies (ISBN 0-618-00210-3) is a book containing exhaustive coverage of the 400+ species of birds found in the Caribbean Sea Written by ornithologist James Bond and first published in 1936 by the Academy of Natural Sciences as part of the International Series. It has been reprinted several times since then, including a September 1, 1999 edition from Houghton Mifflin and a March 4, 2002 edition from Collins. The book contains approximately 256 pages. James Bond (January 4, 1900 ï¿½ February 14, 1989) was a leading American ornithologist whose name was appropriated by writer Ian Fleming for his fictional spy James Bond. The real Bond was born in Philadelphia and worked as an ornithologist at the Academy of Natural Sciences in that city, rising to become curator of birds there.

He was an expert in Caribbean birds and wrote the definitive book on the subject: Birds of the West Indies, first published in and, in its fifth edition, still in print. Birds of the West Indies is known not only for its exhaustive study of Caribbean birds, but also for its author, whose namesake became famous as the fictional Agent 007 of Her Majesty's Secret Service. The name of the book's author, the ornithologist James Bond, was used by Ian Fleming for the name of his popular British secret agent, Commander James Bond. Fleming, a keen bird watcher while living at his estate in Jamaica, owned the book. He later explained that the author's name was "brief, unromantic, Anglo-Saxon, and yet very masculine ï¿½ just what I needed." The book has since become a collector's item amongst Bond fans and was featured as an homage in the twentieth James Bond film, Die Another Day when Bond poses as an ornithologist while in Cuba. Goldeneye: Where Bond was born BBC intervju about Ian Fleming James Bond Gunnar Schï¿½fer at the Dunn`s River Fall Ochios Rios Jamaica.

Ian Fleming's GoldenEye Resort @ Universal Exports, The Home of James Bond, 007 -click to enlarge- Long before GoldenEye was the title for Brosnan's first Bond movie it was the name of Ian Fleming's vacation house in Jamaica. It was here where Fleming first sat down with his typewriter and his copy of Birds of the West Indies and created James Bond. According to John Cox, author of numerous Bond resources, �Every person plans to run off to some tropical isle, but few do. Real life, family, work, and monetary limitations get in the way. Ian Fleming let none of these considerations stop him. When his war was over, he would, with certainty, return to Jamaica, and not just as a tourist. Ian Fleming's GoldenEye Estate -click to enlarge- Fleming set to work. He purchased property, designed a house, and set about doing paradise right. The house, Goldeneye, was like Fleming's writing would prove to be: simple, direct, filled with panache, but never elegant, or opulent. There was no hot-water plumbing, no glass in the jalousied windows, no provision for air conditioning.

Yet, the house quickly became one of the most envied on the north coast of Jamaica.� Even today, the house is still the envy of much of many as it opens its doors as a luxury resort to wealthy patrons from around the world. Packages are offered that will allow you to stay in the actual villa where Fleming worked, as well as in the surrounding houses. In fact, one company is even offering a James Bond extravaganza weekend including helicopter rides to Bond sets, Ferrari rentals and three nights at the villa. Photo Gallery - Click an Image to Enlarge:

Question: Which James Bond film was named after Ian Fleming’s home in Jamaica?
Answer: Goldeneye